Waterfalls visited in March 2006 - Part 2 of 2

Washington - Trip 2 (Sunday)

Sunday was an absolute blast and I really enjoyed myself. I was probably pretty cranky and whiney though because I only had about a half hour of real sleep (my hiking companions would know better than me if I was or not!). Saturday night (after seeing some cool waterfalls that day) I was taken to bingo for the first time. Bingo was actually pretty fun and my cousin was delighted to find out that I liked it and would go again (I have a feeling I will be going again the next time I make it up to WA). There is just something very organized and therapeutic about it that satisfies an accounting-neat-freak-numbers-nerd like me. The bingo hall I went to wasn't full of white haired old ladies either. There were a lot of younger people there. Anyway, I ended up making it back to my hotel (which was on the east side of the sound, where bingo was on the west side - long drive) pretty late and I needed to be up pretty early to start the next day-thus, not much sleep (plus I have annoying insomnia issues that plague me often).

The day was spent on the Olympic peninsula checking out waterfalls in and around Olympic National Park. I have always loved that national park ever since I first visited it many years ago (maybe as many as 18 years ago??). One of the times I was up there, my mother and I had driven up to visit family and we all piled in the van and headed up to Hurricane Ridge. It was a good time. The waterfalls my companions and I visited this trip were Madison Creek Falls, Wolf Creek Falls, Mayrmere Falls, and Sol Duc Falls. You may or may not remember from a previous post that I had visited Madison and Marymere on my February adventure to Washington. The difference is that this time there was daylight when I was there!


Madison Creek Falls - Rating 3.75


I am sure this waterfall gets passed by all of the time because if where it is located. It is right next to an entrance
station for Olympic Nat'l Park so I bet people don't expect there to be a waterfall right there. I like this 45 ft waterfall though. It looked cool by flashlight the first time I saw it, and the daylight view is even better! It was neat to get up close and personal to it as well. We even saw a little cave on the hillside next to the waterfall. Unfortunately there was no easy way to climb up to the top of the falls so no pictures from the top.


Wolf Creek Falls - Rating 4


I will always have a special place in my heart for Wolf Creek Falls - the waterfall where I fell in. First of all, you have to drive on a one-lane dirt road to get to the trailhead. Once parked, the trail is pretty nice to get down to the Elwah River that Wolf Creek flows in to so that you can see the lower portion of the falls. There are a couple of spurs to the trail where you can get some pretty good shots of the lower section of waterfall from above as well. The upper portion remained obscured by trees, but I did get a little peak at it while I was taking a picture from the middle of Wolf Creek (after I was already soaked to the skin) . When we got down to the bottom of the trail there was no real way to get across the creek so that I could get a picture of the lower falls. I thought I would be slick and use a big branch to cross the creek. Well no sooner was I proud of the fact that I didn't get my feet wet by moving the branch in to a more usable position than I ended up sitting up to my waist in very cold water totally in shock. In fact, I was in such disbelief that I actually slipped off the log and fell in that it took me a good long time to actually get up out of the creek. I ended up with quite a nice bruise from that fall on my thigh - deep purple color tender to the touch. The fall must have looked pretty comical! Oh well, after that, I wasn't that tired anymore :-) What I should of done was take the advice from one of my companions to actually take off my shoes and wade up the creek that way to see it. But, noooo, I had to try to get fancy. I am just glad that I had some extra clothes in the Explorer and that it had a good heater!

Marymere Falls - Rating 3.5


I have to say that I actually liked this one better at night. I am not sure why I wasn't in to this one as much as the other waterfalls of the day but I wasn't. The trail leading to it is really wide and well maintained. It would be a great place to take kids. The waterfall itself was nice but I just wasn't really impressed. It drops 105 feet and it received a pretty high rating in two of the sources I used to look at waterfalls (my friend's book "The Waterfall Lover's Guide to the Pacific Northwest" and the website www.waterfallsnorthwest.com) but I just didn't get the high praise. It was neat however to get really close to it and that is why I rated it so high. There are thousands of little streamlets of water that flow out of a moss wall next to it and the upper portion of the waterfall jumps off the edge of the rock ledge before it crashes on to a rock outcropping about a third of the way down. I will probably stop by to see it every time I am up in the area but it will be mostly for the pleasant all around experience, not the wow factor of the falls.

Sol Duc Falls - Rating 4


I am not sure if I would have liked this waterfall as much, had I seen it later in the season at a lower water flow or if there would have been more people around. I read that this is a pretty popular waterfall and that it can get pretty crowded. The things that made me like it so much were: all of the snow that was around (very pretty!), the mist in the tall evergreen trees, the many little streams that flowed along the trail, and there weren't a lot of people around. This was by far the most powerful waterfall of the day. You could actually feel the ground vibrate with the force of the three sections of water pounding down 35 feet in to a small rock canyon.

Dinner that night was some pretty damn good pizza off of Higway 101. The day was a long one but full of great company and great scenery. I was actually so exaughsted by the time I got back to my hotel that I collapsed in to bed and slept through the night like a rock.

My meetings the next day went well and I ended up leaving in a hurry to get a couple of my co-workers to the airport in time for them to catch their earlier-than-mine flight. It turned out though that flights to SFO were delayed and I ended up leaving earlier than they did and before my original flight was supposed to leave. I would have had a pretty long delay had I gotten there any later.

So ends my tale of Washington Trip 2!